(Click HERE for photos) “What do you say to the parents of a 17-year-old girl who threw herself on her younger 11-year-old brother Tamir to shield him and was herself killed by rocket shrapnel?” asked Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) who was in Sderot for three days and nights over the Purim holiday. Joined by Rubin Margules, President of the Zionist Organization of America, Brooklyn region, Hikind distributed mishloach manos to all the residents of Sderot. Hikind raised $50,000 from the public in the tri-state area in less than two weeks to purchase the Purim holiday fare. Hikind and Margules hosted a magnificent Purim party Thursday night in Sderot, as Jews throughout the world celebrated the joyous Yom Tov. “The residents of Sderot are in a contemporary war with the melech of Persia, Ahamadinejad, as he funnels and smuggles rockets, Kassams and mortars to Hamas in Gaza. It is Jewish children who are fighting this modern day war against Persia and Amalek,” Hikind said. “May they triumph as Mordechai and Esther did over Haman.”
 
“What parent in Sderot has not had the experience of being caught in an open area, without access to a reinforced room or bunker, falling on top of their child to shield them from an incoming Kassam? But to know that one child gave her life for her brother and made the ultimate sacrifice….there are not words of comfort to give the parents of a child who was killed because a sovereign nation tolerates the intolerable and has done so for more than seven years.
 
“Atara Orenbach, mother of six children, told of how she has to decide which child to unbuckle first when she is in the car and the red alert sounds. Seconds to unbuckle the one-year-old who cannot unbuckle himself. Seconds to run as far from the car as possible, because the car is the most dangerous place to be when a Kassam hits. Seconds to throw yourself upon a child….two children….how many children can you cover with your body? Seconds between life and death.
 
“Since the disengagement from Gaza it has gotten so much worse,” Hikind says. “The terrorists are now so much closer to their targets….so close…’we can see them,’….explain the residents, as they pointed to the favored launching sites for Kassams. Every five- year-old knows where the reinforced concrete room-like structures are everywhere in Sderot. And they know exactly how many seconds it will take them to reach safety. Five-year-olds.

On Shabbos, at 4:30PM, we were outside touring Sderot, when we heard the red alert siren, and there was nowhere to hide. There were no safe concrete and steel structures where we could find sanctuary, so we flattened ourselves against the outside wall of a building trying to become part of the stone and stucco. The seconds became a lifetime, as we heard the telltale whoosh of the Kassam and then the sounds of impact,  a little further away. We were safe….for now.

For seven years, the ‘red alert’ warning siren has sounded more than 10,000 times in Sderot. What will it take for the government of Israel to adequately protect five-year-olds and their mothers and 11-year-olds and their sisters?”